The NYT’s editorializes on the Saddam execution, and raises a legitimate set of issues (The Rush to Hang Saddam Hussein):
The important question was never really about whether Saddam Hussein was guilty of crimes against humanity. The public record is bulging with the lengthy litany of his vile and unforgivable atrocities: genocidal assaults against the Kurds; aggressive wars against Iran and Kuwait; use of internationally banned weapons like nerve gas; systematic torture of countless thousands of political prisoners.What really mattered was whether an Iraq freed from his death grip could hold him accountable in a way that nurtured hope for a better future. A carefully conducted, scrupulously fair trial could have helped undo some of the damage inflicted by his rule. It could have set a precedent for the rule of law in a country scarred by decades of arbitrary vindictiveness.
It could have fostered a new national unity in an Iraq long manipulated through its religious and ethnic divisions. It could have, but it didn’t. After a flawed, politicized and divisive trial, Mr. Hussein was handed his sentence: death by hanging. This week, in a cursory 15-minute proceeding, an appeals court upheld that sentence and ordered that it be carried out posthaste. Most Iraqis are now so preoccupied with shielding their families from looming civil war that they seem to have little emotion left to spend on Mr. Hussein or, more important, on their own fading dreams of a new and better Iraq.
What might have been a watershed now seems another lost opportunity.
Now, I think that the editorialist imbues the situation with more wasted power than is warranted, but the basic point is correct: the trial was clearly a wasted opportunity. What should have been a very dramatic event that underscored what the Iraqis had lived under became a footnote, a sideshow, a semi-forgotten bureaucratic process. It seemed almost insignificant. Part of the reason for that is that the violence outside the courtroom walls was far more significant to the daily lives of Iraqis. Likewise the violence may have made it less likely that the trial would receive the media attention that it needed.
Still, the event it itself had a smallness to it that I think does bespeak of a lost opportunity. The trial was never going to forge national identity (indeed, it could have indicted the Sunni minority for complicity in Saddam’s rule and created bigger fissures). However, had there been a more unified approach to Saddam’s crimes that focused on how he had wronged Iraq, not just specific persons, then perhaps some sort of unity could have been forged.
Ed Morrissey takes the editorial to task, focusing on the “nurturing hope” line, which is rather cliche, but looking at that issue does miss the broader point: that this trial could have been a useful tool in helping build a new Iraqi state. Instead it has been a perfunctory exercise that will serve as much as a rallying point for more violence as it will as a symbol of justice.
Ed also focuses on the “rush” issues. While a three-year process may not be a “rush” I will say this: the irony is that Saddam is going to be executed before he is tried for all of his crimes and before he is even convicted of some of his more heinous acts. The incompleteness of the process underscores the fact that the situation was not used to its fullest potential. Saddam has come across as a semi-comedic, semi-pathetic figure at the end of this process rather than having been demonstrated to have been the bloody tyrant that he was. Perhaps that is indicative of a rush job or, more likely, it shows that the entire system was flawed.
There is no other way to describe this situation than as a lost opportunity, and in that regard, the NYT very much gets it right.
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December 29th, 2006 at 9:33 am
In my view the critical question is whether it’s our missed opportunity or the Iraqis. If the Iraqi government is actually a sovereign one independent of U. S. control, then it’s the Iraqi’s missed opportunity, otherwise it’s ours.
I don’t think the events of the last year support the idea that the present Iraqi government is merely a puppet dancing to Washington’s strings. It’s their country, their call, their opportunity, their loss.
December 29th, 2006 at 9:49 am
If Saddam were to be tried for all his crimes we could expect him to die of old age. Justice delayed can be justice denied.
More important than this single yet monumental trial is how the criminal justice system is doing as a whole. We certainly can’t judge the American justice system by the O.J. trial so I think it’s best not to judge the Iraqi system by this trial. I would be interested to know more about the overall system but that isn’t real news unfortunately.
The NY Times is jusr complaining as usual here. Rather than accept the fact that cultural differences can lead to differences in legal systems they just lament about another “lost opportunity”. God forbid we and the Iraqis don’t build a perfect society in five years or less. People have to remember it takes time.
December 29th, 2006 at 10:36 am
NBC: Saddam Hussein has been scheduled to begin his indefinite dirt nap before New Year’s Eve
Here in the United States and around the world, the celebratory sights and sounds of fireworks will be heard around the globe as the people; eager to get the Year of 2006 off of their backs and to leap forward into a (hopefully) better and more prosp…
December 29th, 2006 at 11:13 am
Dave,
It still makes it a lost opportunity.
Steve,
Comparing the OJ trial to that of a genocidal dictator diminishes the significance of Saddam’s trial.
At a minimum a trial focused on the key crimes of the regime would have been useful. The trial over the gassing of the Kurds hasn’t even completed yet. A more omnibus approach would have been more useful, I would argue.
December 29th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Dr. Taylor,
I certainly agree comparing the two trials is wrong. But my point is judging a justice system based upon high profile trials and how the press presents them to us. In both cases we have seen courtrooms spiral out of control and a circus atmosphere.
For the Times to lecture us about a “lost opportunity” shows that they don’t get the idea that high profile trials come with baggage that warps the impressions made upon the public.
As far as the trial regarding gassing the Kurds, we all the outcome so why delay any longer? He can only be put to death once.
December 29th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
I suppose the way to frame the question is this: is the trial simply about Saddam’s execution? If so, then it really doesn’t matter how one gets to that point.
However, if the trial could have been used for a broader purpose, along with his execution, then this was clearly a lost opportunity.
December 29th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
Steven Plunk,
The point is not to delay punishment. If you wish, you can think of this in terms of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in SA. There, there was no punishment at all, yet it arguably still served a purpose.
As to your statement that he can only be put to death once, that is exactly the point.
So the question is, if there had been a comprehensive, in-depth, impartial trial, detailing all his crimes, would any good come out of it? I don’t know the answer, but I think it’s a fair question to ask.
December 29th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Of course, had the trial (or trials) continued as a means to reveal all his many crimes against his nation, the process would have to have delved into the complicity of certain incumbent or recently retired officials in the current US government in many of those crimes (when they were officials in previous governments). Neither the “sovereign” Iraqi government nor its patrons ever wanted that.
Much like the Romanian National Salvation Front with Ceaucescu–only much less efficiently and much more divisively–the former dictator must be put away once and for all before he takes his overthrowers down with him.
December 30th, 2006 at 8:08 am
Saddam Hussein Executed in Baghdad (Video Photos)
Saddam Hussein is dead.
Some Arab media, including state-run Iraqiya television, Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya and the U.S.-financed Al-Hurra, reported about an hour before daylight Saturday (about 10 p.m. EST Friday) that Saddam had been executed. There was …
December 31st, 2006 at 6:28 am
I’d say that it was worse than a crime, it was a mistake.
This will be seen, already is being described, in Sunni nations as Shia “justice”, and Saddam ends up being a symbol of the very Sunnis so many of whom he oppressed.
The timing - the first day of the Sunni Eid but before the Shia sabbath - as well as the hurried, secretive appearance of the thing, it’s shabby, almost tacky. This isn’t “The Law” in all its impartial majesty. This comes off looking almost like one of the jihadi beheading videos. It lets the old bastard escape from his most genocidal crimes untried: Anfal, the Iran War and Kuwait. I’m not a conspiricy theorist but why top him for some piddling massacre in Shia country and eliding his other monstrosities? It makes even me wonder if our “advisors” recommended this to shut out the possibility of his dredging up his Eighties shenanagins with the Iran-Contra-Crew…
I don’t know what the alternative was - certainly he had to be sent to his Saint Helena one way or the other - but this is in miniature the whole Iraq misadventure. Ready, Fire, Aim…
January 1st, 2007 at 12:33 am
[...] What will disappoint me should Saddam hang soon is the end of his trials for other crimes. Currently he’s being tried for genocide against the Kurds. Saddam’s execution ends that. Despite Iraq’s judicial problems there’s something official about a trial where evidence is submitted, witnesses give testimony, and a defense argument is offered. Books and reports don’t have the same closure as a trial. “Crimes against humanity” wouldn’t be a part of our vocabulary if the post-WWII Nuremburg trials never took place. I agree with Steven Taylor: “The incompleteness of the process underscores the fact that situation was not used to its fullest potential.” There’s plenty of time for Saddam to die for his crimes. Right now, the world needs to know the horrors he committed. [...]